Here is the thread where we bitch about rock critics we don't like

as much as I love Nirvana, that review is OTM

michelangelo it's the most rockist review i've ever seen!

And as much as I didn't like the Amy Phillips Sonic Youth review (and the reaction was closer to rolling my eyes than seething), Mr. Sinker's comment re: Frank Kogan (who I esteem as highly) makes me think it's worth it.

i dunno - i think he's arguing that any Nirvana "greatest hits" record *is* bad - by definition.

his assertion that this is a cash-in comes as no great revelation - it only seems more impeachable in this case because it's happening to the hallowed nirvana. that this makes it suddenly any more or less sacrosanct is downright silly. and, uh, rockist.

Aside from the cash-in bit, he criticizes the "cheesy romance-novel-type silver embossed sleeve," "foolish liner notes," lack of "all the other unreleased music" and the "poor-value-for-money." All of which seem to me to be very specific criticisms.

Of course, a popist would recuperate almost all of these qualities (even popists want value for money, right? ;) for reasons of kitsch, populism, cheap thrills, disjunctiveness etc. But even if we make that move, are any of those qualities appropriate to Nirvana, of all bands? Everything we know about Kurt Cobain suggests that he would probably have found them to be negative too.

Aside from all that, a) the rockist aesthetic as it's commonly understood is a reductive simplification of much of the music it refers to and b) it's not all bad anyway--so there!

also, i don't see the problem with that nrivana review, for pretty much the same reasons ben pointed out (and hey isn't this thread about bad rock writing anyway -- does the pointing-out of that blurb mean that david fricke is a-ok)?

maura, how does that possibly compute?

i do think it's a boring descriptor insofar as that EVERY record on the market is - to varying degrees - a cash-in, and certainly ALL greatest hits album are, even by the strictest standards. i was bristling at the way that "cash-in" suddenly becomes a weapon to wield when we're talking about nirvana's greatest hits album as opposed to, say, abba gold.

if the whole "kurt wouldn't have wanted it this way" posturing implies that a greatest hits album should always be judged with deference to the artists original aesthetic, then by extension, NO true nirvana greatest hits collection could ever be a good record. this seems silly to me.

as do the complaints about "poor value for money" (see ALL greatest hits albums if you already own the LPs) and "lack of unreleased material" (which is like going to a disney film and complaining about the lack of subtitles)

I don't know how Cobain felt about greatest hits albums, tho I guess I can imagine he might not have cared for them. If he did, then I wouldn't say that should stop the release of a Nirvana greatest hits. But I don't think artistic intention is irrelevant either;
it's possible that a greatest hits can suit some artists more than others. Abba were a singles band; Nirvana were not. I have listened to Abba's albums, and if you have Abba Gold, you don't really need them. Whereas this probably isn't the case with Nirvana.

!!!

I guess when I think Nirvana and singles, I obviously think Teen Spirit. And after that nothing comes to mind. Maybe I missed the other ones.

I was having the conversation with my roommate the other day, about the Beatles' #1s: of all the bands, I was thinking, for whom you might as well buy the albums . . . . I certainly understand the point of the collection, but it seems to me that given the shifts in the Beatles' career -- and the fact that most people have a marked preference for one or another phase -- any of the LPs would actually be sort of more consistent than just the #1s.

And considering that a few of the tracks on Greatest Hits are from Unplugged (thus upping the LPs vs. GH ratio to 4:1) and that the mix of "Pennyroyal Tea" is the non-Albini, Cobain-sanctioned version, I'd argue that the "value for money" factor is fairly decent.

I might be retreading a few points here, but...

i do think it's a boring descriptor insofar as that EVERY record on the market is - to varying degrees - a cash-in, and certainly ALL greatest hits album are, even by the strictest standards.

All records are released to make a buck, true, but there's a difference between "if we make a lovingly rendered compilation of Nirvana's singles plus some fan-favourite album tracks and some unreleased shit, and get someone who is widely acknowedleged as being a good writer on the topic of Nirvana, lots of people will buy it!" and "If we just throw around Nirvana's most well known hits, people will buy it cuz they're too cheap to spring for all the albums, and fans will have to buy it too because we'll tack on 'You Know You're Right'!" I think that what the reviewer is arguing for here is that the compilers of the Nirvana best-of went for the second approach, which if it is true, I find regrettable (and foolish, in these days of p2p sharing and all...)

and "lack of unreleased material" (which is like going to a disney film and complaining about the lack of subtitles)

Ah, I don't know...sure, bonus tracks are usually garbage, but I didn't mind at all having "The Sweetest Thing" on the U2 best of, or those extra tracks on the Jesus & Mary Chain compo... just tag 'em on at the end so that most listeners don't have to suffer through them.

I certainly understand the point of the collection, but it seems to me that given the shifts in the Beatles' career -- and the fact that most people have a marked preference for one or another phase -- any of the LPs would actually be sort of more consistent than just the #1s.

The Red Album/Blue Album approach was right-on, I think.

It reminds me of Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits

What did they miss out on there? "I'm On Fire", certainly, "Jungleland" (maybe too long, tho), "Growin' Up"?

Final Casual Fan Personal Point Of View: Nirvana best-of is a dumb idea, 'cos all the good stuff is on Nevermind and MTV Unplugged and everything else is crap, anyway.

I don't own any Nirvana so I couldn't honestly compare. I think a fan would want all the original albums, yeah.

After reading Scott Seward's El-P review I wondered how such an absolute farce of an attempt to communicate anything, other than a masturbatory fascination with words and the self speaking them, got printed in the Voice. One would expect a reviewer to offer something more tangible than useless literary name-dropping and meaningless pop-culture references like "El-P's sound tries to come across like some William Burroughs cutup of the B-boy's Bhagavad Gita but turns out more like Nabokov's Lolita holding down a slab of Velveeta so it can get fucked by Chester Cheetah." The point of a review is to express cogent thoughts about a piece of work, not rhyme one's way through a gleefully nonsensical diatribe against music one clearly has not taken the time to listen to closely.

Dan Thomas-Glass
Berkeley, California
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UP IN THE ATMOSPHERE

Re Scott Seward's review of El-P's Fantastic Damage: Wow. Did El-P sleep with someone's girlfriend? To whoever is responsible for handing out records to the writers who review them: Thank you for not letting Seward come near anything my band Atmosphere released. I don't know if my mind is complex enough to understand what he's talking about, much less emotionally stable enough to endure the way he attacks the albums that he doesn't like.

Sean ("Slug") Daley
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Roman Holliday once had a Smash Hits cover - looking, as I remember, camper than I think was legal in those days. Wasn't this around the same time as the Style Council were making videos with loadsa nudge-nudge wink-wink homo-erotic overtones? Aaaaaahhh...

I think the last sentence of that review is pretty telling myself. I am starting to think that Scott makes for good reading if you're mostly apathetic about how the album he is reviewing actually sounds and just want to read some guy completely go off his nut and throw out batshit free-association stuff -- which is only bad if he's talking shit.